POLITIFACT - Trump: Democrats “are trying to ban voter ID”

"Trump says Democrats are trying to 'ban voter ID.' That’s misleading.'” by Amy Sherman, PolitiFact 1/11/2022

As Democrats renew their efforts to pass federal voting rights legislation, former President Donald Trump suggested that Democrats want to erase state laws that require identification in order to cast a ballot.

"They are trying to BAN voter ID and other basic measures that can ensure the sacred integrity of the vote," Trump said Jan. 7 in an email from his Save America PAC.

Trump accused Democrats of trying to "pass a radical federal takeover of state election law."

Trump didn’t name any specific bills, and a spokesperson Liz Harrington told us he was "not referring to any legislation."

But Harrington pointed to the House Democrats’ support for the HEROES Act in May 2020.  It was a $3 trillion proposal by House Democrats that focused on aid to governments and businesses and included stimulus checks.  Tucked into that legislation was a provision that said voters could meet a state’s voter ID requirement by signing a sworn written statement attesting to their identity.  The provision did not apply to certain first-time voters who registered by mail.

The voter ID proposal drew criticism from Republicans at the time, but the focus of discussions was about the main provisions of the bill, which aimed to help Americans get through the pandemic.  The legislation passed the Democratic-led House mostly along party lines but didn’t pass the Senate.

Democrats tried to pass a similar voter ID proposal within an expansive voting rights bill, H.R. 1, but the bill never made it into law.  The latest comprehensive bill that addresses voter ID is the Senate Democrats’ Freedom to Vote Act.  Senate Republicans blocked the bill last fall.

The Freedom to Vote Act also includes a requirement that states offer a workaround for voters who lack IDs, but it doesn’t broadly "ban" ID requirements.  Rather, it would set an expansive and uniform policy for what counts as an acceptable ID; it wouldn’t have to be one with a photo such as a driver’s license.  It does contain a provision, however, that would prohibit states from requiring voters present an ID in order to get an absentee ballot.

"I don’t know that ban is the right word, but it certainly makes it hard to put in place strict voter identification rules, especially those that make it harder for minority voters to vote," said Rick Hasen, a University of California, Irvine, law professor who specializes in election law.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that he wants to create a path forward for federal voting rights legislation by Jan. 17.  To proceed on the Freedom to Vote Act or other voting rights legislation, Democrats would have to persuade Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to support changes to the filibuster, and would need every Democratic vote in the evenly split chamber.

Support for voter ID rules

Thirty-five states have laws asking voters to show some form of identification at the polls, while the remaining states use other identifying information when voters cast ballots, such as a signature, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

Polls show most people support a voter ID requirement, but voting rights advocates say that these polls may not grasp the issue’s nuances — such as safeguards that are already in place — and that the trend toward stricter ID rules could make it harder for a small group of voters to cast ballots.  This leaves Democrats seeking to stem the tide of increasingly strict rules, without proposing a total ban on voter ID requirements.

How voter ID requirements vary by state

What bothers some voting rights advocates is what’s in the mix of allowable options for acceptable IDs.  In Texas and Tennessee, for example, gun permits are considered valid voter IDs, but student IDs are not.  Critics say this makes it easy for gun owners, a heavily Republican group, to vote but harder for students, a predominantly Democratic group.

Also, voters who lack government-issued IDs tend to be nonwhite, and that includes in places where elections are settled by slim margins such as Georgia.

Republicans who want stricter voter ID rules argue that they are needed to prevent voter fraud.  But voter fraud is rare.  An AP investigation in December found fewer than 475 potential cases in six battleground states in the 2020 election, not nearly enough to affect the outcome.  "Virtually every case was based on an individual acting alone to cast additional ballots," the AP reported.

FACT CHECK - Trump's Acceptance Speech

President Donald Trump speaks from the South Lawn of the White House on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

"Fact-checking Donald Trump's 2020 RNC speech" by PolitiFact Staff, PolitiFact 9/27/2020

President Donald Trump accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for President in a speech from the South Lawn of the White House on Aug. 27, the first President to do so since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In 1940, Roosevelt accepted the nomination for a third term with a late night radio address.  "It is with a very full heart that I speak tonight.  I must confess that I do so with mixed feelings — because I find myself, as almost everyone does sooner or later in his lifetime, in a conflict between deep personal desire for retirement on the one hand, and that quiet, invisible thing called ‘conscience’ on the other."

Eighty years later, Trump spoke to a crowd in a different moment, striking a different tone.

"I say very modestly that I have done more for the African American community than any president since Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican president," Trump said.  "I have done more in three years for the black community than Joe Biden has done in 47 years—and when I’m reelected, the best is yet to come."

The claim overstates Trump’s own standing within history, historians say.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, a skilled legislator from his years in the Senate, deliberately crafted his civil rights agenda and pushed it through Congress with personal persuasion.  President Harry Truman moved to desegregate the military, and even President Richard Nixon, who was captured on tape making racist remarks, advanced the desegregation of schools and affirmative action in employment.

It’s one of several examples where Trump was wrong or misleading about Democratic nominee Joe Biden or Trump’s own record.

"Joe Biden claims he has empathy for the vulnerable, yet the party he leads supports the extreme late-term abortion of defenseless babies right up to the moment of birth."

This mischaracterizes the Democratic Party’s stance on abortion and Biden’s position.

Biden has said he would codify the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v Wade and related precedents.  This would generally limit abortions to the first 20 to 24 weeks of gestation.  States are allowed under court rulings to ban abortion after the point at which the fetus can sustain life, usually considered to be between 24 and 28 weeks from the mother’s last menstrual period — and 43 states do.  But the rulings require states to make exceptions "to preserve the life or health of the mother." Late-term abortions are very rare, about 1%.

The Democratic Party platform holds that "every woman should have access to quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion—regardless of where she lives, how much money she makes, or how she is insured." It does not address late-term abortion.

Our work gives people the information they need to govern themselves in a democracy.  You can explore our database of over 18,000 fact-checks, as well as our promise tracking for elected officials.

"When asked if he supports cutting police funding, Joe Biden replied, ‘Yes, absolutely.’"

Amid discussions of defunding the police, this claim is missing context.  Biden has said he would redirect some social-services responsibilities away from police departments and roll back investments in military gear, but he also wants to increase federal funding for community policing.

During an interview [video] with Biden, liberal activist Ady Barkan said deadly police encounters with citizens could be reduced if some police funding were redirected to mental health counseling and other priorities.  Biden said he supported that approach.

Biden’s "absolutely" remark came during a discussion of the police using military equipment in their communities.  Barkan interjected as Biden was talking about the military equipment: "But do we agree that we can redirect some of the funding?"  Biden replied: "Yes.  Absolutely."

Biden has also called for linking federal law-enforcement funding to policing reforms.

"Biden has promised to abolish the production of American oil, coal, shale, and natural gas – laying waste to the economies of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico."

This is misleading.  Biden’s climate plan aims to wean the country off oil, coal and natural gas, not abolish it outright.

Biden’s plan calls for a transition to clean energy over several years, with the U.S. reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.  The plan includes energy efficient infrastructure investments and the creation of clean energy jobs.

"Biden also vowed to oppose school choice and close down charter schools, ripping away the ladder of opportunity for Black and Hispanic children."

This is Mostly False.  Biden’s policy platform backs several forms of school choice, including nonprofit charter schools, public magnet schools, and choice within school districts.

He opposes using public dollars to pay for private school tuition, and he opposes for-profit charter schools.

"Joe Biden recently raised his hand on the debate stage and promised he was going to give it away, your health care dollars to illegal immigrants, which is going to bring massive number of immigrants into our country."

This is misleading.  During a June 2019 Democratic primary debate, candidates were asked: "Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants."  All candidates on stage, including Biden, raised their hands.  They were not asked if that coverage would be free or subsidized.

Biden supports extending health care access to all immigrants, regardless of immigration status.  A task force recommended that he allow immigrants illegally in the country to buy health insurance, without federal subsidies. 

Biden "has pledged a $4 trillion tax hike on almost all American families."

Yes and no.  That’s an accurate estimate for Biden’s tax revenues over a decade, according to the Tax Policy Center.  (Other groups have come up with slightly lower estimates.)

But tax analysts say the impact on most American families would be small and largely due to the indirect effects of Biden’s raising the corporate tax rate.  Biden’s proposed increases are heavily concentrated on corporations and the nation’s biggest earners.  The Tax Policy Center estimated that more than 90% of the tax increases would be borne by the top 20% of earners.

Biden has vowed not to directly raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 per year.

"Biden voted for the NAFTA disaster, the single worst trade deal ever enacted; he supported China's entry into the World Trade Organization, one of the greatest economic disasters of all time.  After those Biden calamities, the United States lost 1 in 4 manufacturing jobs."

The accuracy here is mixed.  Biden did vote for the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 and for normalized trade relations with China in 2000.  Both led to a fall in American manufacturing jobs.

Of the two agreements, the one with China was responsible for nearly all of the manufacturing job losses, which were one out five, a bit smaller than Trump said.

Beyond manufacturing, researchers disagree on the effect of both trade agreements on employment in general.  Some find net job losses, while others find neither net gains nor losses.

The Obama-Biden administration "spied on my campaign and they got caught."

False.  Multiple independent investigations, including a series of bipartisan Senate reports, found no influence by the Obama administration over the FBI investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and contacts with the Trump campaign.

The FBI targeted four people with greater or lesser roles in the Trump campaign, but conducted that independently of the White House, a review by the Justice Department found.

Democrats "will demolish the suburbs."

This is a False interpretation of Biden’s proposal to reinstate an Obama administration rule change related to discrimination in housing.  The change required certain localities to work with Washington to identify barriers to fair housing and come up with strategies to fix them.

Experts said restoring that regulation would not force those jurisdictions to make zoning changes or build low-income housing.  It certainly wouldn’t spell the end for the suburbs.

"The top 10 most dangerous cities in the country are run by Democrats, and have been for many decades."

This is misleading.  Large cities do have more crime, and they do have more Democrats — both in terms of general voting and local leadership.  But the connection to crime is a classic example of correlation without evidence of causality.

FBI data shows that the top 10 cities for violent crime have Democrats as mayors, according to a Washington Post analysis in June.

Multiple local socioeconomic and cultural factors play a role in which areas yield that concentrated crime.  The FBI explicitly warns against simplistic readings of the "rough rankings" for those reasons.

"Somehow arguing that Democrats cause crime or something of that sort just doesn’t fit the history of crime prevention in the U.S.,"  David Weisburd, executive director of the Center for Evidence Based Crime Policy at George Mason University, previously told us.

"During the Democrat Convention, the words ‘under God’ were removed from the Pledge of Allegiance — not once, but twice."

The phrase "under God" was not excluded from the televised Democratic National Convention.  Delegates at two of 30 caucus and council meetings that took place during the convention week omitted "under God" during the Pledge of Allegiance.

"We have already built 300 miles of border wall."

This is wrong.  Before Trump took office, the nearly 2,000-mile southern border had 654 miles of primary barriers (the first physical impediment a migrant may face).

More than three years into Trump’s presidency, that has increased by 5 miles.

Trump’s boast refers to the replacement of older barriers with new fences.

"By the end of my first term, we will have approved more than 300 federal judges, including two great new Supreme Court justices."

The 300 number is optimistic.  So far, about 200 federal judges have been appointed by Trump and confirmed by the U.S Senate, according to records from the Federal Judicial Center.  This number refers to "Article III judges" — U.S. Supreme Court justices, federal circuit and district judges — who serve a lifetime appointment after nomination by the President and confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

"When the anarchists started ripping down our statues and monuments, right outside, I signed an order immediately, 10 years in prison."

This is overstating the law.  The 10-year penalty for damaging federal property is a maximum punishment, meaning it doesn’t apply to every violation.

The penalty also isn’t new.  It was contained in a previous piece of U.S. Code.

"We have spent nearly $2.5 trillion on completely rebuilding our military, which was very badly depleted when I took office."

This is Mostly False.  The $2.5 trillion comes from the total defense budgets for the last four fiscal years.  The Pentagon spent or appropriated about $562.5 billion on buying or upgrading equipment, which can take years to build and develop.  The rest went to research and development, military personnel, and operation and maintenance costs, among other things.

Experts say most weapons are the same as before, and there is more continuity than change in defense policy from President Barack Obama to Trump.

"Last month, I took on Big Pharma.  You think that is easy? I signed orders that would massively lower the cost of your prescription drugs."

Misleading.  Trump signed four executive orders on July 24, 2020, that are aimed at lowering prescription drug prices.  But those orders haven’t been put into effect yet — the text of one hasn’t even been made publicly available — and experts told us that if implemented, it’s unlikely they would result in significant drug price reductions for the majority of Americans.

"We will always and very strongly protect patients with preexisting conditions, and that is a pledge from the entire Republican Party."

Trump’s pledge is undermined by his efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act, the only law that guarantees people with preexisting conditions both receive health coverage and do not have to pay more for it.  In 2017, Trump supported congressional efforts to repeal the ACA.  The Trump administration is now backing the GOP-led efforts to overturn the ACA through a court case.  And Trump has also expanded short-term health plans that don’t have to comply with the ACA.

"Over the past three months, we have gained over 9 million jobs, a new record."

The 9 million gain in jobs was preceded by a loss of 22 million jobs due to the shutdown prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.  In February, before the pandemic was declared, the United States had 152.4 million people employed in non-farm jobs.  That number bottomed out at 130.3 million in April.  By July, the number rose to 139.6 million.  In other words, only about 40% of the jobs lost due to the downturn had been gained back

"The United States has among the lowest (COVID-19) case fatality rates of any major country in the world.  The European Union's case fatality rate is nearly three times higher than ours."

The case fatality rate measures the known number of cases compared to the known number of deaths.  The European Union has a rate that’s about two and a half times larger than the United States.

But the source of that data, Oxford University’s Our World in Data project, says that "during an outbreak of a pandemic the case fatality rate is a poor measure of the mortality risk of the disease."

A better way to measure the threat of the virus, experts say, is to look at the number of deaths per 100,000 residents.  Viewed that way, the U.S. has the 10th-highest death rate in the world.

"We will produce a vaccine before the end of the year, or maybe even sooner."

It’s far from guaranteed that a coronavirus vaccine will be ready before the end of the year.

While researchers are making rapid strides, it’s not yet known precisely when the vaccine will be available to the public.  Six vaccines are in the third phase of testing that involves thousands of patients.  Like earlier phases, this one looks at the safety of a vaccine, but it also examines effectiveness and collects more data on side effects.  Results of the third phase will be submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for approval.

The website of Operation Warp Speed is less optimistic than Trump, saying that it "aims to deliver 300 million doses of a safe, effective vaccine for COVID-19 by January 2021."

And federal health officials and other experts have generally predicted that the vaccine will be available in early 2021.  Federal committees are working on recommendations about vaccine distribution, including which groups should get it first.  "From everything we’ve seen now — in the animal data, as well as the human data — we feel cautiously optimistic that we will have a vaccine by the end of this year and as we go into 2021," Dr. Anthony Fauci said.  "I don’t think it’s dreaming."

"We developed, from scratch, the largest and most advanced testing system in the world."

This is partially right, but it needs context.

It’s accurate that the U.S. developed its COVID-19 testing system from scratch, because the government didn’t accept the World Health Organization’s testing recipe.  Whether the system is the "largest" or "most advanced" is subject to debate.

The U.S. has tested more individuals than any other country in the world.  But experts told us a more meaningful metric would be the percentage of positive tests out of all tests, indicating that not only sick people were getting tested.  Another useful metric would be the percentage of the population that has been tested.  The U.S. is one of the most populous countries in the world, but has tested a lower percentage of its population than other countries.

The U.S. was also slower than other countries in rolling out tests and amping up testing capacity.  Even now, many states are still experiencing delays in reporting test results to positive individuals.

As for "the most advanced," Trump may be referring to new testing investments and systems, like Abbott’s recently announced $5,15-minute rapid antigen test that the company says will be about the size of a credit card, needs no instrumentation and comes with a phone app where people can view their results.

But Trump’s comment makes it sound as if these testing systems are already in place, when they haven’t been distributed to the public.

Daniel Funke, Jon Greenberg, Louis Jacobson, Noah Y.  Kim, Bill McCarthy, Samantha Putterman, Amy Sherman, Miriam Valverde and Kaiser Health News reporter Victoria Knight contributed to this report.  Photos from the Associated Press.

FACT CHECKERS - Trump's False Claims

"Fact checkers identify increasing rates of false claims by the President" PBS NewsHour 10/23/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  At a Monday rally, President Trump made comments about a caravan of Central American migrants that had fact-checkers on the alert.  Since the President took office, they’ve identified 2,915 claims that cannot be verified by the truth.  Daniel Dale, Washington bureau chief of the Toronto Star, joins Judy Woodruff to discuss Trump’s increasing rate of dishonesty and how the press should report on it.

TRUMP - Cry Baby 'n Chief

"No, 96% of Google news stories on Trump aren't from left-wing outlets" by Louis Jacobson, PolitiFact 8/29/2018

In a pair of early-morning tweets, President Donald Trump took aim at Google’s system of search results, saying it was biased against outlets that are friendly to him.

In two successive tweets on Aug. 28 (later deleted and reposted to correct a spelling error) Trump wrote:

"Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media.  In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD.  Fake CNN is prominent.  Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out.  Illegal?  96% of … results on ‘Trump News’ are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous.  Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good.  They are controlling what we can & cannot see.  This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!"

....results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous.  Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good.  They are controlling what we can & cannot see.  This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
The part where Trump said that 96 percent of "results on ‘Trump News’ are from National Left-Wing Media" caught our eye.

A close look at the source of the statistic suggests that Trump’s figure is dubious.

Where does the figure come from?

The White House didn’t respond to an inquiry.

The 96 percent figure appears to come from a post on PJ Media, a conservative site.  The Aug. 25 story had attracted some attention in conservative media circles before getting picked up by Trump.

"Is Google manipulating its algorithm to prioritize left-leaning news outlets in their coverage of President Trump?"  Paula Bolyard, PJ Media’s supervising editor, wrote in the article.  "It sure looks that way based on recent search results for news on the President."

To test the premise, Bolyard performed a Google search for "Trump" using the search engine's "News" tab and analyzed the results using a media bias chart.

Of 76 total stories, most came from outlets such as CNN, the Washington Post and NBC.  Only three came up from the Wall Street Journal, which is labeled right-leaning by the chart.

Bolyard wrote that she repeated her search "multiple times using different computers (registered to different users) and Google returned similar results."

Bolyard acknowledged that while the study is "not scientific," though she did conclude that "the results suggest a pattern of bias against right-leaning content."

But this conclusion is debatable, and Trump’s reporting of the results is more problematic still.

Factors that go into Google searches

There is broad agreement that the factors that go into Google’s algorithms for news searches are opaque.  And the lack of transparency can allow theories about ideological bias to flourish.

They "depend on a lot of factors, including what other people are searching for, what they're clicking on, what sites link to a given search result, whether the website is optimized for mobile, and even whether the site supports encrypted HTTPS," said Jeremy Gillula, tech policy director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  "But with all that said, Google's search algorithms are still a black box, and we'd prefer if Google gave users more information and control over the factors that influence search results."

In a statement, Google said that ideological factors do not play a role in its algorithms.

"When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds," the statement said.  "Search is not used to set a political agenda, and we don't bias our results toward any political ideology.  Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users' queries.  We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment."

Even if one considers Google’s algorithmic factors to be "biases," that doesn’t necessarily mean they are ideological biases.  Searches, for instance, are widely believed to favor newer content and original sources rather than aggregations.

At the very least, there should be a fair amount of variability in search results over time.  A study made during one snapshot in time, such as the one published in PJ Media, will not produce the same results a few hours later, as new articles come online.

Bolyard, in an email interview with PolitiFact, noted that she mentioned some of the caveats in her article.  In the article, she cautioned that "factors such as the relevance of the topic, the design of the website, internal and external links, and the way articles are written and formatted all can affect a site's Google traffic.  Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm, and a website's traffic prospects can rise or fall depending on the changes."

However, Trump made no indication in his tweets that the findings could be chalked up to anything beyond ideological bias.

Rating news outlets’ ideology

A more problematic aspect of the study is the metric used to label websites.

To determine "left" and "right," Bolyard used a chart of media outlets assembled by Sharyl Attkisson, a former CBS correspondent who hosts the Sunday morning program "Full Measure" for Sinclair Broadcasting, a network of local stations that has taken a pro-Trump editorial stance.

Here’s the version of the chart Bolyard linked to:

The chart is not neutral evidence supporting Trump’s point, and it labels anything not overtly conservative as "left.  In the "left" category are such rigorously mainstream outlets as the Associated Press and Reuters.  The three big broadcast networks — ABC, NBC, CBS — are considered "left," as are the Washington Post and the New York Times.  Other media outlets that produce a large amount of content every day, including CNN, NPR, Politico, USA Today, and CNBC, are labeled "left."

This means that most of media entities that produce large amounts of widely read and cited news content -- factors that might well give them a leg up in the Google algorithm -- are defined by the chart, and thus by the PJ Media study, as "left-wing."  So, by its design, the study guarantees that an enormous percentage of Trump news coverage would falls into what the chart defines as "left."

Full disclosure:  PolitiFact and its owner, the Poynter Institute, are both listed on the chart as left of center.  We actually consider ourselves not to have an ideological leaning.

"It’s a ‘study’ designed to come up with the outcome it came up with, and it did just that," Chip Stewart, a professor at Texas Christian University’s Bob Schieffer College of Communication.

Moreover, the "left" category lumps these large-staffed, comprehensive news outlets in with genuinely liberal-to-left outlets, such as the Daily Kos, Salon, the Nation, Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, and Media Matters.

A more revealing comparison would be to compare search results of truly left-wing sites vs. truly right-wing sites.

In a written description of the chart, Attkisson acknowledged that the graphic is "subjective" and writes that "position on the chart doesn’t necessarily imply credibility or lack thereof.  Sources on far right and far left have, in many instances, produced excellent, factually correct information at times."

Bolyard agreed that "any chart that attempts to quantify media bias is going to be inherently subjective."  But she added that "while it may be fair to quibble with Attkisson's assertion about how far left-of-center some major media outlets are, I think it's entirely fair to say that outlets like NBC, the New York Times, and CNN skew to the left, especially in their coverage of the President."

Stewart, however, rejected the notion that the algorithm has ideological bias.

"A far more plausible explanation is that the items that drive the algorithm — links, shares, etc. — are more common among the so-called liberal publications, which have a long track record of credible journalism and try to cater to a wider audience," he said.

Either way, Trump used the 96 percent figure without taking into account any of these methodological concerns.

Our ruling

Trump tweeted that "96 percent of (Google News) results on ‘Trump News’ are from National Left-Wing Media."

This figure is based on a non-scientific study from a conservative website that categorized any media outlet not expressly conservative as being part of the "left."  These outlets include wire services, broadcast networks and most major newspapers and collectively account for a large percentage of original news reports produced in the United States.  The methodology essentially preordains that a large percentage of coverage captured by Google will be what the study defines as "left," which is wrong.

We rate the statement False.

LIE FACTORY - National Review Gets a San Diego School Wrong

"Fact Check:  Lincoln High’s Bad Rap" by Mario Koran, Voice of San Diego 1/7/2015

Statement:  “At one San Diego public charter school, assaults on campus involving mostly black and Hispanic students occur almost daily,” wrote Vicki E. Alger, an education researcher, in a story for the National Review (titled "Obama’s Two-Front War on Kids" to show where they lean).

Rating:  False

Analysis:  Lincoln High School’s reputation might be its worst enemy.

Since it reopened with a new campus in 2007, Lincoln has struggled to “rise like a phoenix,” as a former principal once put it, from a disappointing past.  The school has turned over leadership and hemorrhaged students.  Students struggled to raise their test scores higher than the district’s bottom rung.  Lincoln has been portrayed as a place that is simply unsafe to send kids.

A lot of those are valid concerns.  Numbers bear out the students who’ve struggled academically and those who have left the school.  But some of what’s attributed to the school simply isn’t accurate.

Last month, National Review published a story arguing that softening school discipline policies will likely result in more dangerous schools – places where black and brown students aren’t held accountable for bad behavior and assaults occur on a near-daily basis.

The article’s author, Vicki E. Alger, is a fellow with the Independent Institute, a non-partisan education think tank, and author of a forthcoming book on the history of the U.S Department of Education.

The thrust of her piece was that by focusing on racial disparities in school discipline rates, the federal government is implicitly discouraging schools from punishing black and Hispanic students.  Eventually schools give these students a pass for bad behavior, she argues, thus making them even more dangerous.

Here’s a section from the piece:

“Several California school districts that adopted similar quota-based discipline “remedies” are coping with increased violence.  At one San Diego public charter school, assaults on campus involving mostly black and Hispanic students occur almost daily.  Similar tales of chaos and violence are playing out in school districts from Los Angeles to Oakland, where minority students know they now have free reign to threaten and hurt others.  The worst consequence they may have to face is a meeting with a “restorative justice” counselor.”

In the story, Alger doesn’t name the San Diego charter school, but told me through an Independent Institute spokesman she was referring to Lincoln High School.

First, Lincoln isn’t a charter school – it’s a traditional public school.  So that’s a strike.

But putting that error aside, Alger passed along a few articles to support her claim that assaults occur at Lincoln on a near-daily basis.

One of those was a story from KPBS about rising crime at San Diego schools.  A former principal was quoted as saying that drugs, violence and gang activity were constant threats at Lincoln High.  That story, however, was published in 2010.

An editorial from Investor’s Business Daily claimed that Minnesota was adopting race-based discipline policies that looked a lot like state-sanctioned reverse racism.  Here’s how Lincoln was depicted in that story:

Take San Diego.  Just weeks after adopting similar racial discipline quotas, San Diego public schools have witnessed an explosion of violent assaults.

At its premier charter school, Lincoln High, students report daily fights now, mostly involving black kids.  In the past month, there have been several arrests, including one involving a butcher knife, according to local reports.  Victims have been hauled off by ambulance.

Again with the charter school claim.

Alger shared one more story, an Oct. 4 piece from Channel 10:   “Student:  Daily fights at Lincoln High School have created atmosphere of fear.”

The claim that assaults happen every day was attributed to one Lincoln sophomore, identified only by first name, whose face wasn’t shown on camera.

None of the three stories Alger shared with me to defend her claim included any actual statistics about assaults or fights happening daily at Lincoln High.  Anecdotes are one thing, but for Alger’s claim about near daily assaults to be true, the numbers should support it.

I asked the school district for data on assaults recorded at Lincoln so far this school year.  As of Dec. 17, there were 16 batteries and no assaults, the two categories the district generally uses for fights.

Sixteen cases of battery is a concern and worthy of exploration, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to the claim that assaults occur on a near daily basis.  Alger’s story was published Dec. 3.  By then, there had been about 60 days of school, meaning that, at most, fights at Lincoln happen roughly every four days.

Even if you allow for fights Lincoln staff might have not been heard about or ones that happened off campus, the official number isn’t close enough to back Alger’s claim.

In this case, a national outlet seized on a narrative about a troubled school, and Lincoln was held out as a cautionary tale of what could go wrong when a district tries to recalibrate its approach to discipline.

The problem was, Alger’s facts weren’t sound.  She claimed assaults happened “almost daily” at a school later determined to be Lincoln High.  They don’t.  That makes her claim false.

HEALTH CARE - Obama’s Old Comments Come Back to Haunt Him

"‘If you like your health insurance, you can keep it’" by Jon Greenberg, Angie Drobnic Holan, Louis Jacobson, Amy Sherman; PolitiFact.com 10/30/2013

It’s the question-du-jour about the new health care law:  Are people going to be able to keep their health insurance if they like it?

President Barack Obama has several times said yes.  We’ve been skeptical of that claim (along with a few other claims from the law’s supporters).  Last year, we rated his statement Half True.

Obama’s statement had a reasonable point:  His health care law does take pains to allow Americans to keep their health plan, especially people who get their insurance through work.

But most people have never been able to keep their insurance through thick and thin.  Even before the law took effect, a substantial number of policyholders were forced to switch plans every year.  Figures from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office suggested that the law could increase that rate, not reduce it, even if Americans on balance benefit from the law’s provisions mandating comprehensive coverage.

That complicated reality hasn’t stopped the law’s critics from attacking Obama for breaking a promise.

David Axelrod, an Obama adviser, and U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., debated just that issue on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

Coburn focused on people who have to buy insurance on their own (it’s called the individual market) who have been receiving cancellation letters in recent days.  "You're no longer eligible to buy your own plan, which was the No. 1 promise that the president made to the American people," Coburn said.

Axelrod’s response:  "The majority of people in this country, the vast majority of people in this country, are keeping their plan.  People who are uninsured are going to have choices they never had before."

We ran through the numbers and found that the individual market accounts for about 6 percent of Americans who now have health care.  The health care law requires those policies to offer comprehensive coverage, and that means some of the old policies are no longer allowed.

Experts told us there is no precise data to determine how many people will be forced to change health care plans, but they generally agreed the number will be small this year.  We rated Axelrod’s statement Mostly True.

Finally, some of the law’s critics have talked about the cancellation notices together with the fact that healthcare.gov, the federal government’s online insurance marketplace, is plagued by problems and isn’t working properly.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said on Fox News that when you put those two things together, people getting cancellation notices from their insurers won’t be able to buy health insurance.

"On this very day in Florida, it was announced that 300,000 people are going to lose their individual coverage because of Obamacare," Rubio said.  "Now those people next year, they don’t have health insurance.  They are going to owe the IRS money in the form of a fine.  Where are they supposed to go now and buy that health insurance if the website isn’t working, if Consumer Reports is telling people to avoid the website?"

Rubio is right about the people getting cancellation letters, but the letters also state that consumers will have "continuous health care coverage" and assigned them a particular plan, or gave them the option to contact Florida Blue and choose another plan.

So their coverage is not dependent on being able to buy insurance through healthcare.gov, the government’s online marketplace.  We rated his statement Mostly False.

POLITICS - Obama's Numbers 2013 Third Quarter

"Obama’s Numbers, October Update" FactCheck.org 10/8/2013

Full analysis via link

Excerpt

Summary

America is still gaining jobs under President Obama, but millions more live in poverty, typical household incomes have not kept pace with inflation, and the federal debt is up nearly 90 percent and on pace to double before he leaves office.  Stockholders, meanwhile, are far wealthier than they were the day he was sworn in.

U.S. oil production continues to boom, as do wind and solar power, while dependence on foreign oil keeps dropping.  International opinion of the United States has slipped a bit, but generally remains far higher than before he took office, except in the Muslim world, where it has gotten even worse.

These are among the findings in our latest update of “Obama’s Numbers.”

HEALTH CARE - Ongoing Falsehoods About the Affordable Care Act

This issue is so important that I've posted the entire article.

"Obamacare Myths" by Lori Robertson, FactCheck.org 9/16/2013

We’ve been batting down bogus claims about the Affordable Care Act for years, since 2009, when legislation was still in the debate stage.  But they’ve been increasing in intensity in recent months as we approach Oct. 1, the date the insurance exchanges will be open for business for those buying their own insurance, mainly with the help of federal subsidies.

So, more than three years after our last health-care-whoppers piece (published just before the law was signed in 2010), we’re giving readers a rundown of the top claims.

Some have been around for years, and others are relatively new.  Most touch on three topics: jobs, premium costs and medical care. For instance:

• Republicans have made the overblown claim that the law is a job-killer, but experts predict a small impact on mainly low-wage jobs.  The Republican National Committee says 8.2 million part-timers can’t find full-time work “partly” due to the law.  That’s the total number of part-time workers who want full-time jobs, and there’s no evidence from official jobs figures that the law has had an impact.

• Proponents say premiums will go down, while opponents say they’ll go up.  In general, employer plans won’t be affected much, and a price change for individuals seeking their own insurance will vary from person to person.  Obama claimed that all of the uninsured would see lower premiums than what they could get now (before accounting for federal subsidies), but that’s not the case.

• Critics continue to make scary claims about the government coming between you and your doctor, but the law doesn’t set up a government-run system.  If anything, the law comes between you and your insurance company, forbidding them from capping your coverage or charging you more based on health status.  Meanwhile, Obama can’t promise you can keep your plan.  Employers are free to switch coverage, just as they were before.

And there’s more.  Since 2010, we’ve been debunking the persistent claim that members of Congress are somehow exempt from the law.  They’re not.  The administration’s recent decision to give exchanges leeway in how they verify suspect applications for subsidies sparked the false claim that Americans can list what they’d like for their incomes and won’t face verification.

Beyond these more reasonable topics, we’ve seen our share of far-fetched viral messages about microchips being implanted in patients and forced home inspections by the government.  Rest assured.  Neither is true.

Analysis

The law is long, complicated and still being implemented. Many of the claims we’ve seen — and expect to see for some time to come — center on the impact on employers (or employees), premium rates and medical decisions.

Jobs

Claim:  8.2 million Americans can’t find full-time work partly due to Obamacare.

FactCheck.org says:  False.

This assertion from the Republican National Committee echoes others conservative claims that the law is hindering part-timers from finding full-time jobs.  But the RNC’s 8.2 million figure was the total number in June of part-time workers in the U.S. seeking full-time work — what the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls “part-time for economic reasons” — and there’s no evidence from BLS numbers that the law has had an impact on such workers.  There were more in this “part-time for economic reasons” category in March 2010, when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law (9.1 million).  The latest figure, from August, is 7.9 million.

The law requires employers with 50 or more full-time employees to provide insurance or pay a fine.  (This provision was delayed until 2015.)  Full-time is defined as 30 hours per week.  These details have fueled Republican claims that the law will cause — or is causing — employers to reduce their employees’ hours to get under the 30-hour/50-employee thresholds.  It’s certainly possible that some employers will try to get by with fewer workers, or fewer worker-hours.  And some among millions of part-timers seeking full-time work may have had their hours cut.  But we can’t say how many that would be, and neither can the RNC.

To be sure, there have been plenty of news reports of employers, particularly those, like retail stores or restaurants, with low-wage employees, saying they’re concerned and uncertain about the impact of the law, and they might cut hours or workers on their payrolls.  We can’t predict what companies might do once the employer requirements take effect.

While the BLS numbers don’t show an impact on part-time workers seeking full-time work, there is some anecdotal evidence of employers cutting the hours of part-time workers to get or keep them under a 30-hour-a-week limit.  The Washington Post, for instance, wrote about the state of Virginia implementing such a cap on the hours of part-timers, like adjunct faculty at Northern Virginia Community College. And other colleges have instituted such limits, according to press reports. These employers have not indicated in the news reports whether they would be hiring additional workers, or increasing the hours of others, to fill in the gaps.

“ObamaCare by the Numbers,” Aug. 2

Claim:  The law is a job-killer.

FactCheck.org says:  Overblown.

It’s true nonpartisan economic analyses have estimated a “small” loss of mainly low-wage jobs because of the law.  But as one expert told us, there hasn’t been much analysis of this impact of the law because, he believes, economists think the impact will be minimal.  Still, Republicans have continued to push the idea that the law will have a significant effect on jobs.

This claim made our “Whoppers of 2011” list, and it has continued to be pushed in various forms — with the latest being the claims about part-time work.  Mainly, the “job-killer” claims severely distort a 2010 nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report that said the law would have a “small” impact on jobs.  And that’s mainly from workers choosing to work less.  For instance, some might work fewer hours if they receive subsidies to help them buy insurance, or those close to retirement may retire early, with some reassurance that they can buy insurance on their own.

The CBO report said this decrease in the amount of labor in the economy would amount to one-half of 1 percent, which Republicans quickly translated into a loss of actual jobs.  But, as we said, CBO clearly explained this would come about “primarily by reducing the amount of labor that workers choose to supply.”

CBO did say, however, that the employer requirements to provide insurance or pay a fine “will probably cause some employers to respond by hiring fewer low-wage workers.”  But they may hire more part-time or seasonal workers instead.  CBO hasn’t put a number on these jobs.

Other experts we’ve consulted have predicted a minimal impact.  The Lewin Group, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group that operates independently of the company, estimated a 150,000 to 300,000 job loss of minimum wage or near minimum wage positions.  Not included is an unknown increase in jobs in health care and insurance. Altogether, Lewin’s then-senior vice president told us there would be a “small net job loss.”

In July, claims about the law killing jobs took the form of a “mis-tweet” from several congressional Republicans, who wrongly tweeted “74% of small businesses will fire workers, cut hours under #Obamacare.”  But the online, opt-in survey from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the law, found no more than 13 percent of the small businesses that responded said that.  During the presidential campaign, Republican nominee Mitt Romney cited an earlier survey from the group to bolster his claims.

“GOP Mistweets #Obamacare Survey Results,” July 25

“Romney, Obama Uphold Health Care Falsehoods,” June 28, 2012

“GOP’s ‘Job-Killing’ Whopper, Again,” Feb. 21, 2012

“The Whoppers of 2011,” Dec. 20, 2011

Premiums

Claim:  Premiums are going up because of the law. Premiums are going down because of the law.

FactCheck.org says:  It depends.

Politicians have been making these claims since before the law was passed — it was the first item on our list of whoppers back in 2010.  Both sides have a penchant for misrepresenting studies on the matter to support their point.  Our short answer — “it depends” — may be unsatisfactory to readers, but whether you’ll pay more or less than you would have without the law depends on your circumstances.

Are you uninsured and have a preexisting condition?  You’ll likely pay less than you would have otherwise.  Are you uninsured but young and healthy?  You’ll likely pay more (without accounting for any subsidies you may receive).  Are you insured through your employer?  You likely won’t see much change either way.

Let’s start with employer-sponsored insurance.  Employer-sponsored premiums did go up slightly due to the law from 2010 to 2011 (a 1 percent to 3 percent increase, according to experts), because of added benefits, such as coverage for dependents up to age 26, free preventive care and an increase in caps on coverage.  Overall, premiums for family plans jumped 9 percent that year, with the bulk of that due to higher medical costs, not, as critics claimed, the health care law.  Since then, premium growth has been 4 percent on average for 2012 and 2013, modest growth rates historically.

Note that premiums have been going up for years and will continue to do so — with or without the health care law.  When Democrats make claims about premiums going down, they’re talking about premiums growing at a lower rate than they would have otherwise.

The growth in national health spending (that’s spending from the government, businesses and individuals) from 2009 to 2011 also has been at around 4 percent, the lowest level since such spending was first measured in 1960.  President Obama has boasted that the ACA has helped make this happen.  It could be playing some role, with an emphasis on new payment models, but experts say the cause is mainly the down economy.  A Kaiser Family Foundation study said the economy was responsible for 77 percent of the slow growth rate, and that rate is expected to pick up as the economy recovers.

Now, the big question mark is for those who buy their own insurance.  We’ll know more in October, when the state and federal exchanges have published rates and are accepting applications.  But even then, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to make generalizations.  Some folks will pay more, some will pay less, than what they would have otherwise.  Many who had purchased on the individual market in the past will get more generous benefits — which will be good news for some and irrelevant to others.  And the vast majority buying their own exchange plans — 80 percent, according to the CBO — will receive subsidies that bring their total out-of-pocket costs down.

These plans sold to individuals can no longer charge more based on health status or gender, but they can vary premiums based on geography, age and tobacco use.  Republicans have warned of a “rate shock” in this market, with the young and healthy being subject to higher premiums if the market is flooded with older and less healthy policyholders.  A RAND study, published in August and sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, estimated there would be “no widespread trend toward sharply higher prices in the individual market,” in the words of the lead author.  But rates would likely vary from state to state.

The research group looked at 10 states and the U.S. overall, estimating no premium change for the U.S. at large and five states, a decline in two states, and an increase up to 43 percent in three states, not accounting for tax credits.  The study, which held age, tobacco use and actuarial value (level of coverage) constant in comparisons, said average out-of-pocket costs would be unchanged or decline for all states once tax credits are factored in.

But that’s one estimate from an economic model, with noted “limitations.”  Says the RAND study:  “Current data on nongroup premiums are limited, and there are many uncertainties about how individuals and insurers will respond to the complex policy changes introduced by the Affordable Care Act.”  It cautions against “sweeping statements” about the impact on premiums, since rates will differ based on individual circumstances.

That brings us back to our short answer:  It depends.

“False Assumptions on the Health Care Law,” July 11

“Obama Overhypes Health Savings,” July 19

“Health Insurance Premium Spin,” April 5

” ‘Obamacare’ to cost $20,000 a Family?” March 1

Claim:  All of the uninsured will pay less on the exchanges than they could now on the individual market, even without federal subsidies.

FactCheck.org says:  False.

President Obama made this claim at an Aug. 9 press conference, saying that beginning Oct. 1, the 15 percent of the population that’s uninsured would be able to “sign up for affordable quality health insurance at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can get right now on the individual market.”  Obama went on to emphasize that that was before including federal subsidies.  “And if even with lower premiums they still can’t afford it, we’re going to be able to provide them with a tax credit to help them buy it,” he added.

But even Obama’s secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius, has acknowledged that young persons would likely pay more and older Americans would likely pay less on the insurance exchanges.  As we explained, the reason is that the ACA changes how insurance companies can price these policies on the individual market — it forbids insurance companies from charging more for persons with preexisting conditions or based on gender, and limits them to charging older policyholders no more than three times what they charge to younger policyholders.  Premiums can also vary based on geography and smoking — but smokers can only be charged 1.5 times the rate for nonsmokers.

There won’t be any super-cheap plans for the young and healthy, nor sky-high premiums for older folks or those with health conditions.  (High-deductible catastrophic plans, however, will be available to those under 30, or older Americans with hardship exemptions.  They can be purchased only without federal subsidies.)  Some on the exchanges will pay less; some will pay more than what they could get now.  Economist Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was a paid adviser to both the Obama administration and then-Gov. Mitt Romney’s administration on health care plans.  Gruber told us a “small share” of the uninsured would pay higher premiums on the exchanges.  “The president is right for the average uninsured person, but not for all uninsured people,” he said.

That’s before subsidies, of course.  Only 10 percent of the uninsured earn too much to qualify for federal subsidies on the exchanges, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report.  But Obama claimed they’d pay less even without the federal help.

“Obama Overpromises on Premiums,” Aug. 13

Claim:  8.5 million Americans will receive rebates this year averaging about $100 each because of the health care law.

FactCheck.org says:  Misleading.

President Obama has stretched the facts in making this boast about the law’s impact.  The rebates are real, but most of them will go to companies offering insurance to their workers.  Only those who buy their own insurance will get a rebate check directly. And the $100 is an average per family, not per person.

The law requires insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on health costs — as opposed to spending on administration and marketing, and, of course, profit.  If companies don’t meet the 80/20 ratio, they have to issue a rebate to consumers.  Large group plans have to meet an 85/15 ratio. In 2012 and again in 2013 rebates were sent out, but Obama has pitched this as Americans receiving checks in the mail.  This year, in a July 18 speech, he talked about “millions of Americans” opening letters from their insurers and being “pleasantly surprised with a check.  In 2012, 13 million rebates went out, in all 50 states.  Another 8.5 [million] rebates are being sent out this summer, averaging around 100 bucks each.”

But most of the money went directly to employers who provided the policies to their workers.  Of the 8.5 million benefiting from this provision in 2013, 2.7 million are on the individual market, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, meaning the rebate would go directly to them.  In 2012, 4 million of the 13 million benefiting were on the individual market.  Those with employer plans could still see a benefit, as savings are passed along in some way to them.  But, as the Department of Labor, which spells out in its guidance on the matter, says, employers who pay part of the premium are entitled to part of the rebate.

“Obama Overhypes Health Savings,” July 19

“Romney, Obama Uphold Health Care Falsehoods,” June 28, 2012

Medical Care

Claim:  You won’t be able to choose your own doctor.
Claim:  The government will be between you and your doctor.

FactCheck.org says:  False.

These claims are variations on the fear that the government will be taking over health care — choosing your doctor, telling him or her what treatment to administer, etc.  But the law doesn’t create a government-run system, as we’ve said many times.  It actually greatly expands business for private insurance, by about 12 million new customers, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.  And individuals will choose their own doctors, just as they do now.

These type of fear-mongering claims appear to have quieted a bit in 2013 — along with the more extreme death-panel-type hysteria — but they’re still percolating.  A TV ad this summer from the conservative Americans for Prosperity featured a mom named Julie, gently asking, “If we can’t pick our own doctor, how do I know my family’s going to get the care they need?”  And: “Can I really trust the folks in Washington with my family’s health care?”

It turns out, Julie doesn’t really mean that she might not be able to select her doctor herself.  Part of the group’s support for the claim is the small net decline, as estimated by the CBO, in those who get insurance through their employer, a drop of 7 million people by 2018.  (A total of 158 million are expected to have employer-sponsored coverage that year.)  The CBO has said that those losing coverage would mainly be low-wage workers who could get subsidies to buy insurance on the exchanges.  And, certainly, there’s a chance the doctor a worker had been seeing won’t be in the network of providers on a new plan.  Some exchange policies could keep prices low by limiting those networks.  But no one will choose policyholders’ doctors for them.  They simply won’t be guaranteed that a new plan would have the same network of doctors, just as there’s no guarantee of that now (more on this in a minute).

As for the government-coming-between-you-and-your-doctor claim, the law’s regulatory provisions are more like putting the government between you and your insurance company — and in a way that brings added benefits to consumers.  The law says insurers can’t have caps on coverage, turn down customers based on preexisting conditions (or charge them more), and can’t spend more than 15 percent or 20 percent on non-medical-related costs (see Obama’s rebate claim above).

Republicans also have attacked the Independent Payment Advisory Board as some kind of rationing board.  But the IPAB — which is made up of medical professionals, health care experts, economists and consumer representatives — is charged with slowing the rate of growth of Medicare spending, and limited in how it can go about doing that. The law says the board’s proposals “shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums … increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.”

“False Assumptions on the Health Care Law,” July 11

“Romney, Obama Uphold Health Care Falsehoods,” June 28, 2012

“Romney’s ‘Gross’ Exaggeration on ‘Obamacare,’ “May 10, 2012

Claim:  If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.  If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.

FactCheck.org:  Misleading.

Obama has repeatedly made this claim, and the White House continues to use the line on its website.  The law doesn’t force Americans to pick new plans or new doctors, but the president simply can’t make this promise to everyone.  There’s no guarantee that your employer won’t switch plans, just as companies could have done before the law.  And if you switch jobs, your new work-based coverage might not have your doctor as an in-network provider, either.

As we mentioned above, some employees won’t have an offer of insurance and will look for a new plan on the exchanges. Some small businesses could drop their current plans and join the exchanges, too. Grocery store chain Trader Joe’s, for instance, announced that it will direct its part-time workers (less than 30 hours per week) to the exchanges for health coverage and provide them with $500 to help purchase it, as of Jan. 1, 2014.  The company, which has provided coverage to such workers, said “many crew members should be able to obtain health care coverage at very little, if any, net cost.”

“Romney, Obama Uphold Health Care Falsehoods,” June 28, 2012

And There’s More …

Claim:  Those applying for federal subsidies can lie about their income without facing verification.

FactCheck.org says:  False.

The Obama administration gave the insurance exchanges some leeway in how they verify income eligibility for federal subsidies in the first year.  That prompted Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt to claim that the administration had “waived the income verification requirement” and that applicants can “say what you think your income’s going to be with no way to verify that.”  Not true.  The exchanges will compare applications with federal information — such as previous tax returns — and ask for additional information if the person has no previous tax filings.

Here’s where the administration’s new rule comes in:  For applications in which stated income is more than 10 percent below what’s listed in government data, current income information isn’t available, and the additional information from the applicants is insufficient, a sample of those applications will face further requirements in 2014.  Initially, all of these suspect applications were to face more scrutiny, but the exchanges will only have to verify a sample for the first year of operation.

So, if you’re the gambling type, you do have better odds of lying about your income and still getting a subsidy.  At least for a while.  But all income claims will be checked against 2014 tax filings, and the IRS can recoup at least some of the money.  There are also IRS perjury penalties, and civil monetary penalties spelled out in the Affordable Care Act for providing fraudulent information.

“Blunt Wrong on Income Verification,” July 15

Claim:  Congress is exempt from the law.

FactCheck.org says:  False.

Several versions of this claim have been circulating since before the Affordable Care Act was passed.  But no matter how many different ways the critics spin it, Congress isn’t exempt from the law.  In fact, members and their staffs face additional requirements that other Americans don’t.  Beginning in 2014, they can no longer get insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, as they and other federal employees have done.  Instead, they are required to get insurance through the insurance exchanges.

This “exempt” nonsense first percolated before that provision was added to the law through a Republican amendment.  Before the amendment, the legislation said that Congress — as well as federal employees, employees of large companies, and those who get insurance through Medicare or Medicaid — wouldn’t be eligible for the exchanges, which were created by the law for those buying their own insurance and small businesses.  But that certainly didn’t make Congress “exempt” — lawmakers were treated like any other worker with employer-provided health insurance.  They were required to have coverage or face a penalty.

The claim has persisted even after the provision requiring Congress to get insurance from the exchanges became part of the final law.  Fast forward to spring 2013, and the assertion surfaced again when there was concern among lawmakers that the transition to exchange plans — particularly the transfer of the federal contribution toward premiums — wouldn’t go very smoothly.  Politico published a piece on April 24 on lawmakers talking about changing the exchange requirement because of this.  The headline on the story:  “Lawmakers, aides may get Obamacare exemption.”

On Aug. 7, the Office of Personnel Management, which administers the FEHB Program, issued a proposed rule saying that the federal government could continue to make contributions toward the premiums of lawmakers and their staffs on the exchanges.  The federal government has long made such premium contributions, as other employers do for their employees.  OPM said the contribution couldn’t be more than what it is under the FEHB Program.  That ruling, perhaps predictably, sparked new — and still bogus — claims from Republicans of Congress being “exempt” from the law.

“Congress Exempt from Health Bill?” Jan. 20, 2010

“Congress and an Exemption from ‘Obamacare’?” May 3, 2013

“No ‘Special Subsidy’ for Congress,” Aug. 30, 2013

We’re happy to report that one of the most paranoid claims about the law — that all patients would be implanted with microchips — appears to have died off, judging by the viral emails our readers send to us.  But the law isn’t immune from new government-conspiracy-type claims.  One of the latest is that the law includes forced home inspections.  That wild distortion actually refers to grants for voluntary state home-visiting programs to help expectant and new parents.  Forty-six states had such programs in fiscal 2010.

POLITICS - More Republican Lies About the Affordable Care Act

"No ‘Special Subsidy’ for Congress" by Lori Robertson, FactCheck.org 8/30/2013

Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger is misleading his constituents by saying that he will decline the health insurance offered to members of Congress next year because it includes a “special subsidy” from the president that “exempted” Congress from the Affordable Care Act.

Congress isn’t “exempt” from the law.  It wasn’t exempt back in 2010, when we first debunked such a claim; nor were lawmakers exempt in May when the bogus bit surfaced again.  Three months later, they’re still not exempt.  In fact, as we’ve said before, lawmakers and their staffs face additional requirements that other Americans don’t.  And the “special subsidy” to which Pittenger refers is simply a premium contribution that his employer, the federal government, has long made to the health insurance policies of its workers.

The Affordable Care Act says that starting in 2014, members of Congress and their staffs can no longer get their health insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, as they have in the past.  Instead, these federal employees will have to get insurance through the exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act.  Other Americans with work-based insurance aren’t subject to such a requirement.  They can continue to get health insurance through their employers.  Other federal workers, too, can continue to select health insurance plans through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.  But not Congress.

Why the unusual requirement for lawmakers and congressional staffers?  This provision was added when health care bills were being debated, out of Republican concern that Congress get the same insurance that would be offered to some Americans through this legislation — insurance sold through state-based and federal exchanges.  Those exchanges are for individuals who buy their own insurance, including the now uninsured, and small businesses.

Our readers may recall that before this provision was created, there were claims circulating that Congress was “exempt” from the law.  This twisted reading of the legislation was based on the fact that originally Congress, like other Americans with work-based insurance or Americans on Medicare and Medicaid, wouldn’t be eligible for the exchanges.  In other words, Congress was supposedly “exempt” when members couldn’t participate in the exchanges, and now that they are required to do so, they’re still somehow “exempt” from the law.  Neither of these convoluted claims is true.

Pittenger and Huckabee Tell Tales

Pittenger, a freshman representative from North Carolina, explained his stance on Aug. 26 to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in a radio interview in which their disregard for the facts was nothing short of absurd.  Both the questions from Huckabee and answers from Pittenger were bursting with political mendacity.

Pittenger said he objected to a “special subsidy that Obama’s offering members of Congress to pay for our insurance,” saying this wasn’t “fair.”  Huckabee called the “subsidy” a “little break” for Congress that “really exempted them from some of the pain of Obamacare.”

This “break,” however, is nothing more than a continuation of the premium contribution that the federal government has long made to its employees’ health insurance.

Just like other employers, the federal government pays a portion of premiums of the health plans it offers to its workers.  There was concern on Capitol Hill this year, however, that the employer contributions wouldn’t be made to the health exchange plans when members of Congress and their staffs made the switch in January 2014 to their new insurance.  The relevant provision in the law didn’t address the federal government’s employer contribution, which is currently 72 percent of premiums on average.  So no employer contribution would be quite a blow to many congressional workers — just as it would be to other workers who get health insurance through their jobs.  (While employer contributions vary from firm to firm, the overall average employer contribution was 82 percent for single insurance plans and 71 percent for family plans in 2013, according to the latest employer survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.)

But the Office of Personnel Management, which administers the FEHB Program, issued a proposed rule on Aug. 7 saying that the federal government would be able to continue to make the premium contributions.  OPM said the contribution wouldn’t be greater than what is offered under the FEHB Program, and lawmakers and their staffs wouldn’t be eligible for the tax credits that are available to other Americans buying coverage through the exchanges.

In other words, OPM ruled that there would be a continuation of the status quo in terms of the employer premium contribution.  But Huckabee and Pittenger offered listeners a distorted view, telling them this was special treatment for Congress and an exemption from the Affordable Care Act.  Here’s part of their exchange on “The Mike Huckabee Show”:

Huckabee, Aug. 26:  [Pittenger's] not too happy about a little trick that Congress at least swung by the American people, where they’re going to get a subsidy for their health insurance.  Give them a little break, you know, for the members of Congress and the staff. … Robert Pittenger doesn’t want it. …

When the Office of Management and Budget was able to without legislation go ahead and create a subsidy for members of Congress and their staff, it really exempted them from some of the pain of Obamacare.  And I think it’s interesting that not everybody in Congress thinks that’s a great idea and you happen to be one of them.

Pittenger:  Yes sir, I don’t believe it’s fair at all.  Congress should not be exempted from the full impact of Obamacare.  It’s not fair and I’m not going to be a part of it.  So the next enrollment period, I’m going to voluntarily remove myself from the congressional health plan, decline the special subsidy that Obama’s offering members of Congress to pay for our insurance on the Obamacare exchanges.

Pittenger told Huckabee that starting next year “[l]ike millions of Americans, I will purchase my health care insurance without the aid of federal tax dollars.”  Of course, Pittenger is a federal employee who will continue to be paid his salary with tax dollars.

In a Q&A in the Washington Post, reporter Sarah Kliff asked Pittenger why he had a problem with accepting a premium contribution from the federal government, when he had already been receiving one.  Pittenger said:  “Under our current plan, we’ve been under the law.  Next year the subsidy is outside the law.  I’m not okay with that. … It’s a matter of principle.”

He told the Post that the accommodation to allow the premium contributions to continue was “ruling by decree” by the president.  Obama told Democratic senators that he was involved in finding a solution, according to Politico.

As for where Pittenger will get his insurance, the lawmaker told the Washington Post that he didn’t know what his options were, but “I’ll see what’s most affordable and what is the best plan that I can find.”  He noted that he had been on his wife’s plan in the past.

We often say that we can’t predict the future at FactCheck.org, but if Pittenger joins a plan that his wife has, we imagine claims would quickly surface that he was exempting himself from Obamacare.  If Pittenger doesn’t have an employer-provided option, he would have to purchase insurance through the exchanges.

More Twists and Turns

In the radio interview, Huckabee referred to concern on Capitol Hill that if the government wasn’t able to continue to contribute to premiums, Congress would lose valuable staffers, who would leave for jobs that offered health benefits.  He asked what Pittenger thought of these claims of potential “brain drain.”  Pittenger replied:  “The congressional staff, they’re going to be receiving the exact same health benefits as every other federal employee.”  That’s false.

The provision in the law that requires Congress to get insurance on the exchanges says:  “[T]he only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are — (I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or (II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act.”

The law says congressional “staff” means “all full-time and part-time employees employed by the official office of a Member of Congress, whether in Washington, DC or outside of Washington, DC.”  As we reported before, a Congressional Research Service report agreed with the author of this provision, Sen. Tom Coburn, that it wouldn’t apply to committee or leadership staff.  There’s still some confusion, however, on which staffers will be required to get insurance on the exchanges and which won’t.  The OPM ruling said that “[b]ecause there is no existing statutory or regulatory definition of the term ‘official office,’ ” OPM’s rule “proposes that the employing office of the Member of Congress determine whether an employed individual meets the statutory definition.”

Even under that loose rule, at least some congressional staff would, as the health care law says, have to get insurance on the exchanges.

Pittenger told Huckabee that he was supporting a bill that would say “no member of Congress can benefit from a federal subsidy,” and Huckabee offered encouragement for voters to pressure their representatives to also support such legislation.

Huckabee:  I would think members of Congress who don’t support the notion of rejecting this special subsidy are probably going to be busted by a lot of the voters who say, “Wait a minute, you guys passed this and you’re now getting an exemption from it that we’re not getting.  What’s up?”  And I think a lot of town halls are probably filled with people who are shouting and screaming that this is wrong because it’s a double-standard.

We hope not.  If folks are complaining about a “special subsidy,” “exemption” or “double-standard” in town halls, they are misinformed.